“What’s needed most right now is creating the conditions where assistance is no longer needed.” “Let’s move beyond the old, narrow debate over how much money we’re spending [on anti-poverty programs] and let’s instead focus on results—whether we’re actually making improvements in people’s lives.” Those quotes would certainly resonate with proponents of reform to America’s welfare system—a massive labyrinth of 70 different programs whose rolls of dependents have increased steadily throughout the past 50 years, even as they have failed to boost a small percentage of impoverished families to self-sufficiency.
Rampant government spending is out of control. The federal government is spending at a rate of $112,000 per second. Billion dollar programs are driving up U.S. debt to unheard-of levels. Now average Americans are telling Washington to hit the brakes. Following the passage of Obamacare, a coalition of taxpayers, women, families, small business owners and public policy groups concerned with the spending crisis formed Spending Revolt. They hit the road in their tour bus and are asking the people from all across the fruited plain to join them in telling …
Iran’s mullahs may be hoping to capitalize on Facebook, the movie, which opens in theaters here in the U.S. this weekend, a film also known by its official title The Social Network. Certainly, no one could accuse the leadership in Tehran of not having a taste for drama. Not to be outdone by the Hollywood portrayal of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Iran’s state-controlled television has launched its own attack on Facebook and Twitter, whom it calls “hidden enemies,” and no less than recruiting tools for Western Intelligence agencies. Nothing better …
Last week President Barack Obama’s most recently minted czar, Special Advisor to the President for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Elizabeth Warren, spoke to 400 bankers at the swanky Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Washington, DC. Her message, according to The Washington Post: “Behave, play nice, and we’ll get along just fine.” Specifically, Warren promised to take a more “principles-based approach” to regulation, rather than clearly articulating “thou shalt not” rules that banks could rely on. For this Progressive White House, an enlightened expert, like Warren, given broad new powers by …
This week, National Journal hosted an energy, environment, and economic policy summit on the Renewable Electricity Standard (RES). Participants included Sens. Mark Begich (D-AK) and Sam Brownback (R-KS); Dr. Robert Simon, the Majority Staff Director of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources; David Friedman, the Research Director of the Union of Concerned Scientists; and Phil Sharp, the President of Resources for the Future. RES proponents acknowledged that the nation’s current double digit unemployment makes near term adoption of RES politically impossible, but they also outlined a long-term strategy: …
A new report by the Energy Policy Institute, in collaboration with the American Council on Global Nuclear Competitiveness, titled “Economic and Employment Impacts of Small Modular Nuclear Reactors,” investigates how four separate scenarios of small modular reactor (SMR) construction could affect the U.S. economy. Growing interest and discussion surrounding the potential commercialization of small nuclear rectors, both in the U.S. and abroad, makes the study timely and relevant. The study investigates potential impacts of SMR manufacturing, construction, and operation on the U.S. economy. Researchers relied on organizational model data contributions …
An increasing rate of young adults in the United States seems to have cold feet when it comes to marriage. For the first time in recent history, adults between 25 and 34 years of age who are single outnumber their peers who are married. On top of this, the number of married adults in 2009 reached a historical low. Conor Doughtery, reporting on new Census numbers in The Wall Street Journal, writes: In 2009, the proportion of adults 25 to 34 who had never been married was 46.3%, compared with …
Reports from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) are being misrepresented by leftist organizations like the AFL-CIO and the Alliance for American Manufacturing. The purpose of these misrepresentations? To create a false and misleading picture of the relationship between international trade and employment. Close examination reveals that trade deficits are not to blame for the high level of unemployment in the United States. EPI has released several studies on job displacement triggered by international trade. Job displacement consists of a person moving from one job to another, and is not to …
On the 61st anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), China’s borders appear to be under more pressure than at any time since the end of the Cold War. This is not because of external threats to China, but due to greater Chinese assertiveness in various territorial disputes. Consequently, as the dust settles from the recent Sino-Japanese confrontation over the Senkakus islands, decision-makers throughout Asia are assessing prospects for the future. For both China’s Asian neighbors and the United States, this pricklier and more aggressive approach …
Claim Check, which supposedly fact checks public statements, employs the different-must-be-wrong-theory in dismissing a Heritage analysis because it is an “outlier.” It seems that many forecasters in Washington are more afraid of being alone than they are of being wrong. That is, they would rather be wrong with everybody else than right by themselves. One such case is the set of assumptions underlying estimates of economic impacts of the Waxman–Markey cap-and-trade legislation. Most of the analyses of Waxman–Markey based their cost projections on the following assumptions: A virtual doubling of …
